


Horror in the Lower Loxley Attic

by inamac



Category: Dracula & Related Fandoms, Dracula (TV 2020), The Archers (Radio)
Genre: Country House, Crossover, Fluff, Gen, Ghost Stories, Horror, Humour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-22
Updated: 2020-01-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:35:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22362706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inamac/pseuds/inamac
Summary: When Lynda Snell added a few wooden stakes to the props for the Ambridge Ghost Story event she could never have realised how grateful one visitor would be for her foresight.
Relationships: Dracula & Zoe Van Helsing
Kudos: 2





	Horror in the Lower Loxley Attic

Social work was a family tradition, though it had been some years since any member of the family had found themselves formally employed in the role which Zoe found herself performing this Christmas. She checked the list on her clipboard again, to ensure that none of her charges had strayed, though the short journey from The Laurels Nursing Home to Lower Loxley Hall afforded scant chance for the usual truants to make a bid for freedom.

The climb up the creaking servant's stairs to the attic of the old stately home had elicited some grumbles, especially from Mrs Titcombe who had gone into service at the Hall as a girl and resented this return to the backstairs. However, having reached the venue for these seasonal ghost stories the old lady was placated when she recognised one of the mismatched chairs provided for the audience as having belonged to the housekeeper in her heyday and Mrs T took possession of it with a smug smile of triumph.

While the remaining Laurel's residents settled themselves with a good deal of chattering Zoe looked around the room. It was difficult to see where the normal clutter of an attic ended and the stage setting began. The cobwebs were certainly not authentic, but most of the dust was. The old, leather-bound trunks were far too brittle and heavy to have been hauled up here merely for effect, but the coffin was probably as fake as the bats hung from the rafters and the larger spiders. The mounted stag's head was authenticated by a brass plaque recording it as having been shot at Balmoral in 1852 by Col. Mortimer Pargetter, but there was no explanation for the stuffed armadillo tucked into a gap between a cask of amontillado and the rusted scythe leaning against the bare bricks of the chimney stack.

Her inspection was cut short by a flickering of the lights and the dramatically sombre notes of Saint-Saens' Danse Macabre issued from the speakers hidden in the rafters.

'Cliche,' she thought, and then her breath quickened as a small blonde woman stepped into the spotlight.

"Welcome," she said, "to the Lower Loxley Ghost Story Evening. I am Elizabeth Pargetter, manager of Loxley Hall, and I hope that you will enjoy this evening's entertainment. I should like to thank Russell Jones and Lynda Snell for their contributions to this event." She nodded to indicate the woman standing to one side, and a man at the back of the room. Zoe turned, and at once her unease since she had entered the room was explained.

'Jones,' she murmured. "So that is what you are calling yourself now. At least it's more imaginative than Smith. I wonder exactly what 'contribution' you have made?'

Elizabeth had been saying something about her daughter, Lily, and refreshments in the Orangery after the show, before finally introducing their storyteller, Jim Lloyd.

The lights dimmed again, and a single spotlight turned on to track an elderly man with the air of a retired academic, who crossed the stage to take his seat in a wing-backed leather armchair. ("More cliche," thought Zoe.) Someone played a few atmospheric notes on a piano, or perhaps it was a recording, Zoe did not recognise the tune, and the man opened his book and began to speak.

_"It was when I was about sixteen...."_

The stories were well told, and elicited shivers of horror and gasps of fear in all the right places. Zoe barely heard them. She was planning, wondering how best to handle the situation. If she was right (and generations of Helsing blood in her veins told her that she was), it might already be too late to save the residents of Lower Loxley Hall from a fate literally worse than death.

She remembered hearing that Elizabeth Pargetter had recently had some sort of mental breakdown, and that her daughter had dropped out of university after some scandal about her tutor. Classic victim behaviour. And 'Jones', dilettante intellectual with a golden tongue, seducing his way into a large and lonely stately house. _More comfortable than a Transylvanian castle_ , she thought. She knew now that the coffin was not mere set dressing, and wondered how he had explained it when it had been delivered to the house. Or were the occupants too much in his thrall already to have questioned his actions? Elizabeth seemed to be unaffected as yet. Perhaps there were other victims, 'brides', who were providing him with sustenance, young, haunted women moving through their Borsetshire lives with no idea that their vitality was being drained by a vampire. There was horror here, and it was not embodied in the old man with the haunted eyes who was reading the tales.

"Dracula," she murmured, watching the smug, dark-eyed man as he watched the storyteller, "I know you. I wonder if you will recognise me?"

 _"...The street lamp flickering opposite shone on a quiet and deserted road...."_

There was a hushed silence in the room as the last of the tales ended. Jim Lloyd closed his book and stood, giving a slight bow, and the audience was released from his spell to erupt into applause. Elizabeth stepped forward.

"Thank you, Jim. That was very spooky!"

The storyteller gave her a look that might have been contempt, but was probably resignation, as he left the room. Zoe had some sympathy for him. Elizabeth was theatrically chirpy, almost too much so, as if she was covering for some deep emotions. She seemed very anxious to get out of that room as soon as possible, and Zoe wondered whether the place held some personal trauma, or perhaps she just wanted to get away from Jones, who showed no sign of leaving. 

"And now," Elizabeth continued, "if everyone will follow me. Please take care on the stairs." She glanced at Zoe. "Perhaps, Ms Helsing, you would wait until last to see that everyone is safely down?"

Zoe nodded. That suited her. She had not missed the vampire's start at her name. He drew back into the shadows and she wondered what strategy he had to deal with the danger she represented. She herself was never unprepared, except that her coat and bag had been left in the cloakroom, at the foot of the stairs, and he now stood between her and the door. She would have to improvise.

The last of the visitors had left, and he swung the door close behind them.

"Well?" he queried. "What are you going to do now that you have discovered me?" He sounded genuinely interested.

"Warn them," she said. "I have seen your signs on Elizabeth Pargetter. And Lily."

He laughed. "Warn them? The Pargetters have been 'warned' about me by people they trust far more than an unknown nurse. Lily's own brother tracked down one of my brides. And yet I am still here."

"I see you have made yourself comfortable," she said, moving to lay a hand on the coffin lid.

"Very much so. It is good to be back in the sort of house to which I am accustomed. To be surrounded by family portraits and good old family heirlooms. Even if they are not my family. Yet."

"And will never be!" she had found what she needed, something that no doubt someone other than Dracula had thought good set dressing for this play. A heavy black crucifix (perhaps a family heirloom he would not want to lay claim to) and, more usefully, a roughly carved wooden stake. Her fingers closed around it, and she hid it in the folds of her skirt as she moved towards the door. Not the one to the back stairs, but one that opened onto the roof of the building.

He saw the movement, and laughed again. "It is dark outside, Ms Helsing. And even if it were not, it is many years since I allowed daylight to harm me. But don't let me stop you leaving."

The door was locked, and bolted, but he waited while she unfastened it, still concealing the stake. If she could lure him closer...

And suddenly he was beside her, looming over her, catching her around the waist and gripping her wrist.

"In fact," he whispered, "do let me help you. It is such a fine evening..."

The door swung open. They both almost fell through the opening. Outside the air was cold and clear, a full moon visible just above the chimneys. There was a narrow walkway here, and a parapet high enough to stop any accidental falls. But she was not planning an accident. He had still not realised that she held the stake, her left hand still concealed by her skirt.

"Look," he said, steering her by her trapped wrist to the centre of the walkway, where there was a gap in the pediment allowing them to see the long curve of the drive below, the parked coach, and the elaborate fountain, with the sweep of lawns running down to the haha and the rest of the estate. "Lower Loxley Hall. I intend that it shall be mine. Do you really think that anything you can do will stop me?"

"Yes!" Her hand swept up, the pointed stake angled precisely to drive in under his ribcage and into his heart. She had centuries of ingrained genetic memory behind the blow. She could not miss...

She saw, for an instant, an expression of astonishment on his face, and the he was falling; falling back against the tiles, pushing her and the stake away, lifting her and tipping her, with superhuman strength, over the stone balustrade and away...

She screamed. A high, echoing cry that seemed to go on long after her body hit the flagstones three stories below.

"Interesting," he thought. "There must be something about this building that magnifies echoes." He turned away and walked through the door, back into the house, into his inheritance. He had women to comfort. And then he would feed.

The consequences of this night would shake Ambridge to the core.

The End

**Author's Note:**

> This story is the result of the BBC's 2019 Christmas TV and radio schedules, in particular the re-imaging of Dracula (TV) and the Ghost Stories from Ambridge (Radio 4), together with the most recent events in the ongoing saga of English country life that is 'The Archers'. All are currently (2020) available on i-player/Sounds.
> 
> I regret not getting in a reference to the Ambridge Rewilding scheme - but I am sure Russ will encourage the introduction of wolves in due course.


End file.
